Wow… Canada actually has an authentically notable contributor to the world electronic dub scene in the form of one Andrew McPherson. Who knew? Voices Have Eyes is the Toronto producer’s follow-up to his 2004 debut More Africa In Us and, as such, impresses in the maturity and completion of these songs. Featuring singers from Mali, Turkey, Fiji, Rwanda, Nigeria, and India certainly adds the most credence to the ‘world’ tag, being as a great many of the instruments used here sound quite artificial. Andy obviously has a great appreciation for chill room downtempo, though, so he tends to smother these mixes in all manner of effects and processes. It’s the sound he’s going for.
Bringing in a six piece live band to jam this album out was a fantastic move on his part. The humanity fuel adds true jive to the grooves, almost compensating for the highly synthetic properties of the work. After all, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the majority of world music is the all-encompassing spontaneous jam delivery with limits only provided by a lack of instruments or musicians, tribally beating out the soul of troubled lands through the gift of sound, making music to heal the people and praise whatever version of Gawd to which they happen to subscribe. Although some of that gets through here and there, this is not Manu Chao. It’s world-influenced dub, downtempo, and marginal hip-hop produced flawlessly at the cost of natural vibrancy.
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